The present invention relates in general to a tape player, and is more particularly, concerned with a hand held and guided tape reader for playing or reading recorded tape attached to cards, sheets of paper or plastic sheets.
There presently exists a number of recorder-players for use with cards containing a recording tape or other recording medium attached to them. See for example, my U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,860,961 and 3,852,817. These prior art devices have been developed primarily for use in the education field where it is desirable to present short segments of paired audio and visual information. For example, in learning to read a student may be provided with a card which has a word visually printed on it with the corresponding verbal representation being recorded on the tape. This mode of learning has certain advantages associated with it. It is easy for the teacher to prepare the material and to tailor the materials to a particular students need. This is especially so in learning vocabulary words, for example. Also, with this mode of learning the student is actively involved with the material by selecting and inserting the cards into the player thereby increasing the student's interest in the ongoing education process. The study-practice period is student paced and the student can select certain areas for emphasized practice.
However, there are some disadvantages associated with these prior art devices. These devices are usually relatively cumbersome and sometimes present some difficulty to the user in gaining knowledge of operation of the device. Many of these prior art devices include an adapter for receiving the card for use with a conventional recorder-player. The resultant device is, as previously mentioned, somewhat cumbersome and can be relatively expensive.
With these prior art devices the card carries only one message. Thus, if two or more related pieces of information are to be studied (or one long sequence), there is an interruption of the information because the user must insert separate cards. With this arrangement, the student must put one card in the player, listen to the recorded message, remove it from the machine, and install the next card.
Accordingly, one object of the present invention is to provide a hand held and guided tape reader for listening to messages recorded on a recording tape or other recording medium.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a reader that is easily hand held and that is not cumbersome to use.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a reader as set forth in the preceeding objects and that is relatively inexpensive to make.
Another object of the present invention is to provide, for use with a hand held tape reader, a card that may be of letter-size having a plurality of recording strips thereon each having a message or other indicia associated therewith. These cards may also have an embossed ridge associated with each strip of recording tape for use with a blind person.